Explanation:
What are these Earthlings going?
Millions of people move about
planet Earth by airplane every day.
Hundreds of thousands of
airplane flights
take place over the US every day.
A dramatic graphical
depiction of these flights was created by
Aaron Koblin
and is shown above.
Clicking on the
above image
will bring up a movie in many web browsers, a movie that might better be visible
here.
The movie
depicts flight patterns that occurred over a few days in 2005 March.
The count on the lower left shows the number of
USA-related flights at the time listed on the lower right.
The trails shown are not
contrails but rather generated artificially by a computer algorithm.
Major cities in
North America and the
USA are discernable.
Inspection of the movie shows that some times of the day are busier than others, indicating that flights leave some destinations at times that are convenient for travelers.
In terms of distance, flying to a distant location is
much safer than driving to that location.
Flying in an airplane, however, remains slightly more dangerous than driving to a
nearby airport.